2011-04-17

I noticed an enterprise pattern which is Platform-Enabled Agile Solutions (PEAS). It is applicable to situation when it is highly desirable to advance with a new enterprise-wide initiative in an incremental way. It means that developing the final user requirements is virtually impossible because the users just do not know exactly what should be built and they prefer to try those news things in real life. As well as the different departments (or target communities) advance with their (obviously different) speed. The classic approach to IT project management – define everything up-front – just does not work.

From the systemic point of view, it is necessary to provide many solutions (SOLs) which have a lot of similar functionality. The provisioning of SOLs should be carried out with the pace of the target community of practice. At each moment of time, each community may have different pace and may need different functionality.

The proposed architecture (see the illustration above) is based on the following considerations:

The platform must standardise and simplify core elements of future enterprise-wide system. For any elements outside the platform, new opportunities should be explored using agile principles. These twin approaches should be mutually reinforcing: the platform frees up resource to focus on new opportunities while successful agile innovations are rapidly scaled up when incorporated into the platform.

An agile approach requires coordination at a system level.

To minimise duplication of effort in solving the same problems, there needs to be system-wide transparency of agile initiatives.

Existing elements of the platform also need periodic challenge. Transparency, publishing feedback and the results of experiments openly, will help to keep the pressure on the platform for continual improvement as well as short-term cost savings.

In this pattern, technical concerns are decoupled from business concerns. All of those concerns are addressed TOGETHER by the enterprise architecture.

Added later: the following illustration shows that amount of efforts for implementation of solutions (which is proportional to "Functionality" x "Scope span") is reduced by the platform. Of course, the latter is a "common" good and a decision to build a platform should be taken strategically.